The Crusades and the Near East
Page 22
Of course, the kingdom of the Capetian and Valois dynasties was considerably smaller than the France of Louis XVI or Napoleon. Yet even if we disregard those parts of the hexagon that were not part of the medieval kingdom of France, there were still substantial numbers of speakers of non-Romance languages: Breton in Brittany, Basque in the south-west, Catalan in the south-east and Flemish in the extreme north. Most of the Romance-speaking area between these extremes actually belonged to three distinct languages. The tongues of Gascony, Limousin, Auvergne, Languedoc and Provence were various dialects of Occitan (also known as Provençal or langue d’oc), while to the east of this area the language of most of the kingdom of Burgundy was Franco-Provençal. The majority of those who accompanied Raymond of Saint-Gilles (probably the largest single contingent in the First Crusade) originated from Occitan-speaking regions. The language of the northern two-thirds of France was (Old) French proper, sometimes known as the langue d’oil, in contrast to the langue d’oc of the south, after their respective words for ‘yes’. Northern and central France, together with neighbouring French-speaking parts of Lotharingia in the kingdom of Germany, provided the armies which accompanied Count Hugh of Vermandois, Count Stephen of Blois and Duke Robert of Normandy, and many of the followers of Count Robert of Flanders and Godfrey of Bouillon. However, the latter two armies also included speakers of Flemish and Low and High German, while Bohemund’s troops, most of whom were Norman knights with their Lombard followers, must have
predominantly spoken Norman French and Italian.
There seems to be an unspoken assumption on the part of historians that communication between the different language groups within the First Crusade 115
A L A N V . M U R R A Y
armies was never a problem, since the issue is never raised in any of the standard modern histories. Yet Fulcher’s comment on the different languages found within the armies highlights the fact that monoglots from different linguistic communities could not communicate with each other. Communication may not have constituted a major difficulty as far as most military and administrative issues were concerned. The members of the political classes of different nationalities, as previously defined, probably could speak or at least understand some form of northern French, or had access to those who could; after all, many of them, such as Robert of Flanders and Godfrey, had followers from both Romance- and Germanic-speaking areas. If bilingual individuals were not present in a given situation, most of the clerics could probably communicate by means of Latin, the international language of the Church. However, such mechanisms did not apply to the rank and file. For the vast majority of their speakers, French, Occitan and Franco-Provençal were not mutually comprehensible, and nor would Flemish, German, Catalan and Italian have been understood.28 Even speakers of French from a given region might not necessarily be able to understand those from other dialect areas. The Norman dialect, for example, contained many words of Scandinavian origin that were unknown to other varieties. It also shared with Picard several phonological peculiarities, such as initial k- (before a) where the Ile-de-France, Champagne and elsewhere had ch-, a distinction that has produced modern English castle in contrast to French château from earlier chastel.29
Peasants or townspeople who had only ever communicated with their immediate neighbours until they joined the crusade would not necessarily have understood those born hundreds of miles away, despite using forms of what linguists now define as the same language.
Part of the difficulty in interpreting the depiction of different nationalities and linguistic affiliations in the narrative sources derives from the ambiguities of the term Franci, a name which derived from the ethnonym of the Frankish people of the Migration period. In theory, Franci could refer to the entire population of the kingdom of France. However, the diminished authority of the king in the two centuries before the First Crusade and the powers of the great feudatories meant that it was most often applied to those French who inhabited the areas north of the River Loire, and often excluded some groups with a strong ethnic identity, such as Normans or Bretons. It might also be used in an even more restricted sense, for the inhabitants of the Ile-de-France.30 However, another meaning became common in the course of the crusade, in that the crusaders seem to have adopted a group designation originally applied to them by Byzantines and Muslims: that is, Frangoi in Greek and al-Ifranj in Arabic. This term, which ultimately derived from the ethnonym of the Franks, was applied by Easterners to Latin Christians in general, and rendered as Franci in the Latin of the crusade narratives.31 So it is sometimes difficult to know whether the writers of these works were referring to inhabitants of France or to the crusaders in general when they used the term. Sometimes authors resorted to the composite noun Francigenae (literally ‘those born in France’) when they wished to refer to the French, but in 116
N A T I O N A L I D E N T I T Y , L A N G U A G E A N D C O N F L I C T
general they seem to have been overwhelmed by the popularity of Franci as the general term for crusaders.32
However, the narrative sources suggest that those from the north of France perceived themselves as being different from southerners. The followers of Raymond of Saint-Gilles were regularly designated by other crusaders as Provinciales, that is ‘Provençals’, even though only a minority of these people actually originated in the marquisate of Provence.33 Raymond of Aguilers, the author closest in sentiment to the count and his followers, explains that all those from Burgundy, Auvergne, Gascony and Gothia (i.e. the former Gothic area of Septimania around Narbonne) were called Provençals, and the others French ( Francigenae), while the crusaders as a whole were known as Franks. There was no political unity among the regions listed by Raymond at this point, and he seems to be offering an explanation for a usage which is foreign to him. The most likely explanation for the term Provençals was that it was adopted by the French speakers of the north as a blanket designation for all those who spoke Occitan and Franco-Provençal dialects and who were much less readily understood by the majority of the crusaders.34
In cases of dispute, it would be natural for crusaders who shared a language or dialect to rally together to support their leader against others of a different linguistic affiliation. In 1097, Bohemund’s nephew Tancred was disputing possession of the port of Tarsus in Cilicia with Baldwin, brother of Godfrey of Bouillon, and had actually besieged Baldwin’s followers. Tancred’s men were French-speaking Normans and Italian-speaking Lombards from southern Italy.
Baldwin’s troops must have been borrowed from his two brothers, Godfrey of Bouillon and Eustace III of Boulogne; it is likely that they formed the nucleus of the group later known as the comitatus Baldewini, and included many Flemish speakers from the county of Boulogne. The balance was tipped in favour of Baldwin by the arrival of an expedition of corsairs from Flanders, Frisia and Antwerp, who provided some 300 troops to assist his forces on the land. The leader of this association was one Winemer, who originated from the county of Boulogne. Yet while he evidently regarded himself as a subject of Baldwin, son of Count Eustace II of Boulogne, this did not necessarily apply to the majority of his followers. A key factor in this dispute was a linguistic affiliation between speakers of Germanic dialects spoken from Frisia as far south as Boulogne, Dunkerque and Guînes in the Pas-de-Calais.35 As Albert of Aachen states, once Baldwin’s men and the corsairs had recognised the speech of the other side, they made a treaty of alliance.36
The greatest number of disputes involving the leaders of the crusade were those involving Raymond of Saint-Gilles and other magnates. The Count of Toulouse seemed to possess a talent for antagonising his fellow princes, probably because he was set on establishing a principality for himself in the East, something he attempted on at least five occasions: disputing possession of Antioch with Bohemund, then trying to control the area known as the Jabal al-Summaq east of the Orontes; disputing possession of Jerusalem and then Ascalon with Godfrey, 117
A L A N V . M U R R A Y
before
finally establishing a territory around Tripoli. Raymond was clearly a man of ambition, and he tended to take a more pro-Byzantine attitude compared to his fellow commanders. There were also grudges about money. Raymond was criticised for being greedy for tribute from the Muslim cities of the coast, while afterwards he attempted to take Tancred and his men into his own service, but failed to remunerate Tancred according to his expectations.37 A final matter of contention was Raymond’s continuing belief in the Holy Lance found at Antioch long after this relic had been discredited in the eyes of the majority of crusade leaders.38
The rivalries involving Raymond and his followers are also significant in a linguistic context. It is surely no coincidence that he and his large army, made up mainly of speakers of Occitan dialects (and probably including some speakers of Catalan and Franco-Provençal), often found themselves in opposition to the other contingents, most of whose members spoke northern dialects of French. Indeed, the most acrimonious and enduring disputes of the southerners were with two groups at the other end of the linguistic spectrum: the Norman-Italian contingent from Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, and the mixed French-, Flemish- and German-speaking army of Godfrey of Bouillon.
Not all the disputes during the crusade were driven by ambitions of the leaders.
For those who were literally lower down the food chain, securing enough to eat was far more important than grand designs, above all during the siege and counter-siege of Antioch from the winter of 1097–8 through to the following summer, which formed the most critical period of the entire crusade.39 As available supplies were used up, it became common for bands of crusaders to scour the surrounding countryside looking for food. These foraging parties seem to have comprised smaller units than the entire contingents commanded by princes, and it is striking that they were organised on regional or linguistic lines. Ralph of Caen tells of an incident when foragers from Bohemund’s army came into conflict with others from southern France, saying that when fighting broke out, those who spoke the same language fought together, while others might be attacked because of the language they spoke, even though they were innocent. He goes on to explain that ‘those from Narbonne, Auvergne, Gascony and all of the Provençal people’ took one side, while ‘the Apulians were supported by the remainder of the French [literally ‘of Gaul’], especially the Normans’, while others, such as Bretons and Swabians, held to those who spoke their languages.40 Here we have a case of Occitan speakers fighting against French speakers, with language functioning as an immediate badge of identity. A similar incident occurred after the crusaders had gained control of Antioch. One section of the walls was guarded by Germans, who were used to keeping watch at night and sleeping by day. The Turks discovered this pattern and launched an attack in daytime, and were beaten back only when the Germans were rescued by other crusaders. Once the city was secure again, the latter – who must have been predominantly French-speaking – made their feelings known by parading through the streets, shouting, ‘The Germans are shit,’ a sentiment which Ralph of Caen gleefully recorded in Latin verse.41
118
N A T I O N A L I D E N T I T Y , L A N G U A G E A N D C O N F L I C T
Many members of the classes of lords and knights seem to have had little difficulty in transferring their loyalties between leaders. We know, for example, that among the men who made up the household of Godfrey of Bouillon during his short rule in Palestine, there were several who had originally left Europe with Bohemund or Raymond of Saint-Gilles.42 Such people had simply acted in a way that was common among a social group characterised by feudo-vassalic ties, seeking new lords in order to better their own conditions. However, for the broad mass of the crusaders, antipathies between the different contingents drew on national or regional loyalties, in which linguistic affiliation played a predominant part. Language was an explicit test of loyalty, whether disputes derived from rivalries between leaders, or whether they originated in resentments within the broad mass of crusaders.
Crusading and the Holy Land in the twelfth century
Crusaders from all parts of Western Christendom settled in the Holy Land after the First Crusade and in the course of the twelfth century, but the majority seemed to have originated in northern France.43 Certainly, irrespective of the origins of the population, and the possibility that some groups of settlers may have retained their own languages for a generation or so (as is common among immigrant communities), the language that established itself as the main vehicle of communication among the European settlers was a northern variety of Old French, although it should be stressed that linguistic investigations of the French language of the Levant are still in their infancy.44 Yet, despite their own diversity, the settlers of all four principalities of Outremer seem to have regarded themselves as a single nationality, known as Franci (or sometimes Latini) in Latin and Francs in French.45
John of Würzburg, a German pilgrim who visited the Holy Land in the third quarter of the twelfth century, was struck by the number of settlers from different parts of France who were represented among the population of Jerusalem, but was shocked by how few Germans he could find.46 He was even more concerned about the memory of the part played in the capture of the Holy City by the Germans, among whom he counted Duke Godfrey, fearing that their heroic deeds had been forgotten and ascribed only to the French. As a concrete example he cited the case of a German soldier called Wigger or Wicher, claiming that the inscription on his grave in the church of the Holy Sepulchre had been erased and replaced by another referring to ‘some French soldier’. He produced his own epitaph characterising Wigger and his companions as ‘not French, but Franconians’, and consoled himself with the thought that if enough Germans had settled in the kingdom of Jerusalem, its frontiers would have stretched as far as the Nile.47
John of Würzburg was, however, correct in one respect, namely that very few Germans settled in the Holy Land. Those who are known were, like Wigger, followers of Godfrey of Bouillon, and they are not known to have been joined by significant numbers of compatriots up to the time that John went to Palestine 119
A L A N V . M U R R A Y
as a pilgrim. It was only after the Third Crusade that we can find several high-status individuals from Germany who settled there, presumably with followers: Otto of Botenlauben, Wener of Eguisheim and Berthold of Nimburg and his son.48 This observation raises the question of the relative contribution of different nationalities to the crusades to the Holy Land in the two centuries following its recovery by the First Crusade.
The organisation and structure of crusading underwent fairly rapid development soon after the inception of the movement. The popular crusades of 1096, disorganised bands led by charismatic leaders, had given way to better-organised forces which accepted the leadership of great secular magnates. The expeditions of 1101, which can be seen as delayed waves of the First Crusade, were similarly organised, with armies following the leadership of secular and ecclesiastical magnates such as William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, William II, Count of Nevers, Welf IV, Duke of Bavaria, and Anselm, Archbishop of Milan.49 Thereafter, crusades were increasingly led by kings, who could mobilise financial resources which were not available to most of their vassals; this factor became especially important because of the costs of travelling to the East by sea, which was undoubtedly the preferred form of passage by the late twelfth century and the sole form employed after 1197.
The importance of kings as leaders of crusades extended beyond their borders, and it was common for crusaders from the smaller kingdoms to join contingents from the greater ones, accepting the leadership of foreign monarchs. Thus Danes and Bohemians often joined up with crusaders from Germany, as occurred during the Second and Third Crusades, while Scots tended to follow the kings of France or England.50
The relatively small numbers of Scots, Danes and others meant that there were few conflicts between them and their host nationalities on crusade. The authority that kings were accorded meant that they were able to exercise a much greater disci
pline among their followers than the diverse leaders of the early crusades, and they tended to travel separately to the East. We can observe little in the way of national disputes during the Second Crusade, in which the armies of Conrad III of Germany and Louis VII marched separately and came to grief separately, although this did not prevent Odo of Deuil, the French chronicler of the expedition, complaining of the Germans’ aggressiveness, ignorance and predilection to plunder on Byzantine territory.51
The Third Crusade also saw separate hosts led by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Richard the Lionheart of England and King Philip II Augustus of France set off to defend the few settlements left in Frankish hands after the great conquests of Saladin in 1187. The Yorkshire parson Roger of Howden, who accompanied Richard, commented on the diversity of the response in Latin verses reminiscent of the words of Fulcher of Chartres describing the First Crusade a century before: They march toward the East bearing the Cross
And taking all of the West with them:
120
N A T I O N A L I D E N T I T Y , L A N G U A G E A N D C O N F L I C T
They lead an army diverse in language, rites, customs and manners,
But one which is fervent in faith.52
Yet the Third Crusade differed significantly from the expeditions of 1096–1101